W' 



Price, 10 Cents, to be had at all Booksellers and News-Dealers. 



46T FREMONT AND McCLELLAN, 



I] 




]0litical an^tJ Military Carers 



REVIEWED: 



Their BiKTH, Education, and early Associations— Political Affinities — Fre- 
mont's Rocky Mountain Explorations — Conquest op California — Alleged 
" Insubordination " — McClellan at West Point — In the Mexican War — 
Their Relative Experience — McCl!:llan's Skcket Sertice in Cuba — His 
Promotion by Jeff. Davis — Visit to the Crimea — His Book — Fremont's 
Presidential'Campaign — McClell vn's Proclamation— Fremont's Pro- 
clamation — The Two Policies -McClellan Gent;ral-in-Chief — 
Fremont's Missouri Campaign — jvIcClellan's Plans — His Advance 
ON Manassas — PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN — Yorktown — Wil- 

LIAMSBURGH — SeVEN PiNES — MrS. LeE — StEWART'S RaID AND 

THE Bloody Seven Days — Cross Keys— Concluding Re- 
flections ON Strategy— " THE MAN FOR THE HOUR." 



VAN BUREN DENSLOW. 



SECOND EDITION. 



PRINTED AT THE OFFICE 01' THE SEMI-WEEKLY CLARION. 

1862. 



Orders received at the Office of Wynkoop, Halleubeck & Thomas, 113 Fulton Street. 







Class Z^^^ 

Book 'i M -^ D3i 






FREMONT km McCLELLAI, 



fliitital u)i Slilitarg Camo 



REVIEWED: 



Their Bikth, Education, and early Associations — Political Affinities — ^Fre- 
mont's Rocky Mottntain Explorations — Conquest op California — Alleged 
"Insubordination" — McClellan at West Point — In the Mexican War — 
Their Relatite Experience — McClellan's Secret Service in Cuba — His 
Promotion by Jeff. Davis — Visit to the Crimea — His Book — Fremont's 
Presidential Campaign — McClellan's Proclamation — Fremont's Pro- 
clamation — The Two Policies — McClellan General-in-Chief — 
Fremont's Missouri Campaign— McClellan's Plans — His Advance 
on Manassas — peninsular CAMPAIGN — Yorktown—Wil- 

LIAMSBURGH — SeVEN PiNES — ^MrS. LeE — StETVART'S RaID AND 

THE Bloody Seven Days — Cross Keys — Concluding Re- 
flections on Strategy— " the MAN FOR THE HOUR." 



VAN BUREN DENSLOW. 



PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OP THE SEMI-WEEKLY CLARION. 

1862. 



E 'Ml,!) 31 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by 

JEKEMIAH BURNS, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern 
District of New York. 



V 



PREFACE. 



The following' review was written as one of the series of 
"Crisis Papers," now publishing in the Semi-Weekly Clarion. 
After its appearance in that form, some of its readers, believ- 
ing that it deserved to be more widely disseminated, and de- 
siring to publish it in its present form, have done so, with 

the consent of 

THE AUTHOK. 



A REVIEW 

OF THE 

POLITICAL AND MILITARY CAREERS 

OP 

FEEMONT AND McCLELLAJST. 



Upon the secondary actors in a drama, whether upon the mimic stage 
or upon the broad theatre of real life, public opinion is generally united. 
They pass on all sides for about what they are worth, as their lesser 
importance, by sparing them from criticism and partisanship, saves them 
from both friends and enemies. So in the reputations developed by this 
war ; there is little difference and no conflict as to the merits of Butler, 
Burnside, Anderson, McDowell, Pope, Curtis, Wallace, Sigel, and the 
hosts of other brave and capable military men who have distinguished 
themselves and shed lustre on their country's arms by their achievements 
in responsible yet subordinate capacities. Fremont and McClellan, how- 
ever, enjoy no such undisputed honors. "While a portion of the people of 
the country appear to regard Fremont as a military failure, and McOlellan 
as possessing wonderful military abilities, others are enthusiastic in their 
admiration of Fremont's entire career as a soldier, and fail to see the evi- 
dences that McOlellan is entitled to the favor which the Administration 
has shown him. "When we add to this, that those who are satisfied with 
Fremont are generally those who voted for Lincoln, while the admirers of 
McClellan are those who voted for Breckinridge, Douglas and Bell, it is 
apparent that this war of reputations is, to a degree, partisan, and it is 
also probable that the instinctive elective affinities of the people have dis- 
cerned in these men a fitness to be the leaders of their respective senti- 
ments, and that therefore this affinity for Fremont or McClellan is based 
on deep-seated qualities in the men, which make them fit types of the two 
great political classes of the North. We propose to compare them, first 
politically, and secondly as soldiers. 

Fremont was born and reared with all the advantages which the son 
of a poor widow enjoys in South Carolina. McClellan labored under all 
the early difficulties attending the child of a prosperous physician, in 
Philadelphia. Though poor — perhaps, because poor — Fremont educated 



himself. Thongh rich, McOlellan was educated by the nation. "Whatever 
military abilities are possessed by Fremont have cost the comitry nothing ; 
while it would be singular if McOlellan were destitute of military knowl- 
edge, since lie was educated at West Point and sent to Europe, at the 
national expense, to obtain it. Though born in the most aristocratic State 
of the South, Fremont early struck out for the North, and his energy, 
prudence, associations, skill in business, and personal success and popular- 
ity are all Northern in tbeir character. He lias long stood, and stands 
to-day, the peculiar representative type of the party of Freedom, as 
opposed to the party of slavery-apologists in the North. Even his part in 
the Mexican war, which consisted in the conquest of California, did not in 
any way commit him as it did the more southern armies of Taylor and 
Scott, and their officers, to the business which constituted the main object 
of the war, viz. ; extending human slavery, since slavery could not be 
extended to California. 

McClellan, on the other hand, though cradled in the city of Brotherly 
Love, has never professed to be anything else than Southern in his political 
principles upon the points which have been gradually dividing more and 
more the North from the South, from the days of Calhoun to the bombard- 
ment of Sumter. It is doubtless unimportant tliat the Southern press 
claim that McOlellan, while at West Point, conspicuously preferred the 
society of Southern cadets to that of the Northern "mudsills" in that insti- 
tution. Being a Northern student himself, it is highly improbable, what- 
ever his political views, that he would treat his own section of the country 
with a contempt so ostentatious as to have made it a memorable element in 
his character. True, his service as a lieutenant in command of sappers 
and miners, in the war upon Mexico — a war which was wholly Southern 
in its origin, intensely Southern in its aim, and mainly Southern in the 
officers conducting it — brought him again into association with such 
officers as Twiggs, Quitman, Worth, Lee, Beauregard, Pillow, Davis, 
Johnston, and Magruder, thus cementing warm personal friendships be- 
tween him and them ; but this was but the natural effect of his position. 
The fact that all these were his seniors in age, rank and consideration in 
the service, naturally tended to draw him towards them by that elective 
affinity by which ambitious minds are ever drawn to their superiors, and 
since he was deservedly well received by them, it was but natural that 
mutual influences should be exerted, tending to confidence upon their 
side, and to that regard for Southern men and Southern institutions 
upon his part which he has always consistently maintained, until it 
became necessary for him to choose between the preservation of such 
associations and a major-generalship in the service of his country. 
The claim of the Kichmond papers, that he once, in correspondence with 
one who is now a distinguished rebel officer, expressed his sympathies 



with the South with a force which could he fairly construed into a tender 
of his services to the Southern rebellion, should any attempt h^ made to 
coerce the South, is but a fair example of the ingratitude with which the 
rebels of the South regard their former friends. Did any such correspond- 
ence exist, the Panic faith which would reveal the fact would not scruple 
at publishing the letter. It is, however, a significant contrast that during 
the administration of Pierce, while the party of freedom were fixing their 
eyes upon Ool. Fremont as their representative man and candidate for the 
highest office in the gift of the people, the party of slavery — then in 
power, with Jefferson Davis as Secretary of War, and Pierre Soule (now 
in Fort Warren) as Minister to Spain, and endeavoring to foment a war 
with Spain for the acquisition of Cuba to the (then) United States, and of 
course to the present " Confederate States" — caused Lieutenant McCleUan 
to be appointed by Mr. Jefferson Davis upon secret service in and about 
Cuba, having reference to such expected war, in which, as in that with 
Mexico, Northern blood should again flow to build up the Southern slave 
power. Indeed, Capt. McClellan was openly stated by the press, at the 
time, to have been one of the minor officers who, with Beauregard, Dun- 
can, Mansfield Lovell, G. W. Smith, and others now in the rebel army, 
were to command in Quitman's intended fiUibustering expedition against 
Cuba, which was broken up by Secretary Marcy. And, for his compli- 
city with these movements for strengthening that slave power which is 
now the secession power, he was promoted from his brevet to a full 
captaincy by Jefferson Davis and sent to the Crimea. Fremont, however, 
has never been honored by the then secret and now open traitors to 
their country — nor, so far as we are aware, has he ever been used, 
under instructions or otherwise, to further the machinations of the cun- 
ning propagandists of human bondage and of its political power ; though 
the Southern people, and especially those of Charleston, testified, by 
the presentation of swords, &c., their high appreciation of his services as 
a soldier in the Mexican war, and their pride in the fact that he was born 
in the South. 

The first great attack upoi' the Sebastopol of slavery was made under 
the banner of Fremont. The battle-cry, " Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men, 
Fremont," rang throughout the continent, from the Alleghanies to the Cor- 
dilleras, from the snows to the tropics, with a thunder peal that announced 
to friends and enemies that the defeat of Fremont was freedom's last defeat. 
The North retired from the polls to their homes confident of the victory 
of four years after. Enough of them, however, h:,'' voted with the South 
to elect an Administration prepared to co-operate with the latter, who, 
stung and goaded by the certainty of coming defeat, went to Washington 
and spent the next four years, aided by the whole power and vigor of the 
Government, in preparations for the work of overthrowing it. It is singu- 



8 

larly illustrative of the fact that a happier star presided over the obscnrer 
destiny of McOlellan, that while Col. Fremont was defeated for the Presi- 
dency of the United States, Lieut. McOlellan was successful in obtaining 
the Vice Presidency and Superintendency of a "Western Ptailroad. 

It is a part of his political history also, that upon the breaking out of the 
war, McOlellan, on crossing the Ohio into Virginia, issued a proclamation, 
stating that should the slaves rebel (which they had not given the slight- 
est evidence of intending) he, McOlellan, would crush them " with an 
iron hand," while he instructed his troops in a general order to treat the 
white rebels kindly if they got them into their power, " because most of 
them were deluded." Here, then, was a platform growing outof McOlel- 
lan's political sentiments, of kindness to the rebels, whom he was sent to 
punish, and of iron-handedness to the slaves, with suppressing whom, if 
they should rebel against the rebels, he and his troops had as much to do 
as with driving home their stray cattle — no more. Nay, it is not now to 
be doubted, that any general insurrection among the slaves at that time, 
while it would have been far less sanguinary than the scenes which have 
since occurred in our efforts to preserve the Union, would have spread 
such consternation among the rebels, and would have so divided and 
crippled their resources, as to have speedily insured the triumph of the 
Union cause. Nor has the expectation, that a pro-slavery course would 
develop a Union sentiment at the South, been realized in a degree sufficient 
to afford us any assistance in quelling the rebellion. The most extensive 
insurrection, or the most thorough anti-slavery policy, could hardly have 
rendered the South more united than it has been. Fremont, on the other 
hand, believing that, as commander of his department, he had as much 
authority to free slaves as McOlellan had to suppress their imaginary 
insurrections, and knowing that in this claim he had the pi*ecedent of the 
greatest of Eoman generals in ancient times, and of such generals as Jack- 
son, Taylor and Gaines, in our own country, declared — what Oongress 
has since enacted — the slaves of rebels free. By the last-named events, 
these two generals are politically to stand or fall. In the mere matter of 
place-holding, Fremont has already fallen, and McOlellan has been sus- 
tained. But office-holding is not Fame. The babbling of to-day's crowd 
may gratify greed, and be misnamed success by the vulgar herd, but true 
glory results only from sacrifices made in the cause of freedom and humani- 
ty, not from the silver bought by their betrayal. 

Having reviewed the political considerations which influence the poj)- 
ular judgment of Fremont and McOlellan, let us candidly examine their 
respective military careers. Fremont received his first commission as 
Second Lieutenant of Engineers in the year 1838. He immediately 
entered upon his daring and infinitely valuable explorations of the patii- 
less regions of the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and the inter- 



lying basin — contributing to tbe scientific world more valuable information 
than probably any living explorer, if we may except Humboldt, and 
entrancing tbe admirers of heroism and the lovers of romance in Europe 
and America with the dangers which he encountered, and the apparently 
insurmountable difficulties which he overcame. It was by this means, 
instead of idly place-hunting around Washington, that Fremont had 
passed successively through the grades of captain by brevet, captain, 
major, and lieutenant-colonel, which was his rank in 1846, when McOlel- 
lan entered the army from "West Point as second lieutenant of engineers. 
As showing the comparative degrees of military experience possessed by 
the present actors in this war, we may state that A. S. Johnston was then 
captain of dragoons, and Beauregard a lieutenant of engineers, so that 
Fremont then outranked all the present actors in this war, on either side, 
except Scott, Shields, Wool, and Twiggs. At the close of the Mexican 
war, McClellan was even nearer to Fremont in rank than in reputa- 
tion. McOlellan had won creditable mention as a lieutenant of en- 
gineers, in at least two official dispatches of the general to whose 
division he had been assigned, and had been promoted to a brevet captain- 
cy, an average not brilliant good fortune. Fremont had, with 25 men, 
crossed the great mountains and deserts of America, amid untold hardships, 
yet with signal success, subsisting his horses on the bark of trees, and his 
men upon the flesh of horses — and had, with this force, recruited by a 
few Americans resident in California, while still unaware of the exist- 
ence of war with Mexico, hoisted the Bear Flag of Oalifornian independ- 
ence, prevented the British fleet from seizing this province, driven out 
the Spanish forces, and, when he learned of the existence of our war with 
Mexico, exchanged the Bear Flag for the Stars and Stripes, thus giving to 
his country, as a province, California, the land whose rivers ran over glis- 
tening sands of gold. This success, and his scientific explorations of the 
Eocky Mountains, made him probably the most widely-known man of his 
age, not of royal birth, in the world. As a soldier, it was his good for- 
tune to win to his country a province whose untold wealth repaid the 
cost incurred by Taylor and Scott in acquiring territory to be afterwards 
surrendered. As a man of science, he had received the praises of Hum- 
boldt, and, as a popular hero, the applause of the people. McClellan, still 
unknown, might trace his aristocratic ancestry to the knights of Lochin- 
var, or search for their graves upon the bloody fields of Flodden, but the 
world instinctively bowed before the pedigree of Fremont as one of 
nature's royal family, whose reputation might be as storm-beaten, but 
would be found as pure and enduring as the snow-covered mountains 
among which his laurels had been gathered, and with which, by the mys- 
terious coincidences of Destiny, his very name was associated. 

Fremont's success in California attracted the envy of the red-tape West 
Pointists, to whose dullness his foresight was insubordination. Several 



10 

charges were made against him at the prosecution of General Kearney, who 
had been sent to conquer California, but who unfortunately did not arrive 
until some time after Fremont had completed the work. The only charges, 
which were finally sustained, grew out of the fact that Fremont had 
obtained, on behalf of the United States, an agreement, subject to the 
ratification of his Government, for the purchase, for $5,000, of an island 
commanding the harbor of San Francisco, which he foresaw the United 
States would need for military purposes, and which is, in fact, now 
occupied by a fort, the property of tlie United States. In this writing, 
he is styled Military Governor of California, in using which stj»le his 
offense of insubordination consisted. His defense was, that he had received 
a commission from Commodore Stockton, as Military Governor, and that 
Stockton and Kearney, being unable to settle between themselves the 
question of precedence, he, being compelled to obey one or the other, 
using his best judgment, had obeyed Stockton. This course, he had 
every reason to believe at the time, was assented to by Kearney, who 
cooperated with him as Military Governor, in a friendly manner, until 
after the return of both to the States, when the charge of insubordination 
was unexpectedly made against him. President Polk offered him a pardon 
from the sentence of dismissal from the service passed by the court-martial, 
but Fremont, believing the finding and sentence utterly without foundation, 
refused the pardon and resigned. General Kearney, upon his death-bed, 
solicited and received the pardon of Fremont for the injury he had done 
him. The charge, nay, often the offense, of insubordination, being a frequent 
fact in the lives of the greatest military men, and occurring almost inva- 
riably when a far-seeing captain is called upon to sacrifice the interests of 
his command or of his country to the caprice or ignorance of an official 
superior, allies him with such names as Bonaparte, Wellington, "Wolfe, 
Jackson, and Scott, rather than furnishes evidence of military incompe- 
tency. McOlellan, also, resigned, owing, it is said, to the fact that his 
profession as a soldier stood in the way of his marriage. Such were the 
relative positions of Fremont and McOlellan at the bombardment of 
Sumter. McOlellan, hitherto known as an officer of an influential 
corporation, upon whom, however, the nation had bestowed marked 
advantages of acquiring military knowledge, who had, up to that hour, 
voted with the South, whose last vote was cast for Breckinridge, the 
extreme Soutliern candidate, now a brigadier in the rebel army, in prefer- 
ence to both Lincoln and Douglas, two candidates from his own State of 
Illinois, would seem to have stood less chance of a prominent appoint- 
ment. The supposed necessity, however, for uniting, by such means, all 
parties at the North, caused the first military appointments to be made 
almost exclusively from the anti-Republican parties. Patterson, whose 
house was mobbed in Philadelphia until he was compelled to raise the 



11 

stars and stripes, was made, to the surprise of all who knew him, a gen- 
eral, and to his pro-Southern apathy and indifference we are indebted for 
our defeat at Bull Run. Butler, who had seceded with the secessionists 
from the Charleston Convention, was commissioned by his political oppo- 
nent. Governor Andrew ; and though he has as yet done nothing as a 
strictly military man, yet, as a semi-military administrative officer, the 
country has an evidence that such selections from the former vehement 
friends of the South may sometimes be as fortunate as the cases of Pat- 
terson, Stone, and others have proved disastrous. McClellan was com- 
missioned, by Governor Dennison, of Ohio, a Major-General of Volunteers, 
and placed by the President in command of the Depai'tment of Ohio, 
comprising both banks of the Ohio River. Fremont was then in Europe, 
hastening his arrangements to return, and improving his time, means, and 
credit in purchases of arms and munitions of war, difficult to be obtained, 
and of which the nation stood in such need. Meanwhile, the press and 
public men of the country, of all parties, quietly assumed that his past 
services and experience eminently fitted him for a responsible command ; 
but no word of pressure, solicitation, or dictation was imposed upon the 
President's judgment as to what that command should be. The President 
and Senate alone were responsible for any rank or command which might 
be given or denied to Fremont. All that military propriety required at 
that time was, that his rank should be equal to his former rank of Lieutenant- 
Colonel. Still it would have been a strange freak, alike impossible to the 
country and the President, to have overlooked the fact that his former rank 
and military experience were superior to those of any Unionists, except 
Scott, Shields and Wool, all of whom had passed the prime of their vigor, 
and that, if in addition the Administration should consult civil prominence 
as a guide and test of military talent, as in the absence of purely military 
men it was compelled largely to do, certainly none could stand higher 
than the modest, but pure-famed, ex-Senator from California, who had 
been the unanimous first choice of that North to which Mr. Lincoln was 
alone indebted for his Presidency, and who, had he contended, like Mr. 
Lincoln, against a divided instead of a united Democracy, would doubtless 
have preceded him in the presidential chair. "Whatever data the President 
had, therefore, in his own position, as the head of the successful popular 
party, for estimating the popular confidence in his own civil abilities, 
applied equally to Fremont, without disparaging the effect of the ex- 
clusively military experience and reputation of the latter, advantages, for 
the crisis into which the country was then drifting, which the President 
had not enjoyed. 

Meanwhile, McClellan entered upon his command in Western Vir- 
ginia, opening it with a proclamation which, though it failed to 
please the rebels, won golden opinions from all other pro-slavery men. 



12 

While the party who, through a Eepublican Governor and President, had 
given him his appointment, saw him transcend his province with surprise, 
perhaps with mortification, the President did not amend the proclama- 
tion, and the President's constituents were content, supposing he intended 
to leave to his generals to deal with slavery according to their own 
judgments. McOlellan was fortunate in the scene of his operations. 
"Western Virginia had few slaves, and was therefore thoroughly loyal. 
But few rebel troops had been thrown into it, and those were commanded 
by inexperienced men, and vastly exceeded in numbers by McOlellan's 
force. The rebels never in a single instance voluntarily gave battle to 
McOlellan's subordinates; and, therefore, one report might have been 
made of them all, that — 

" When the fight became a chase, 
He won the flght who won the race." 

We say to McOlellan's subordinates, as it is not generally known that Gen. 
McGlellan was not 'personally fresent^ and, that no forces under his imme- 
diate command actually took part in any of the battles in Western Vir- 
ginia, though the entire credit of being the commander of the department 
in which they were fought and the author of the official dispatches in 
which they were announced justly belongs to him alone, as the like 
credit relative to the department of the Mississippi and its battles belongs 
to Halleck. The first battle (Phillipi) was fought at that place (McOlellan 
being 24 miles distant, at Orafton) by Brigadier-General Morris and 
Colonels Kelly and Dumont, our forces numbering over 3,000 — the enemy 
stated at 1,940. At Eich Mountain, General McOlellan, in command of 
10,000 men, designed to attack the enemy in front. It is difficult to 
arrive at the exact numbers of the enemy, but we do not find them stated 
higher than about 5,000. He sent General Rosecranz around to the 
enemy's rear, with 3,000, who, coming only upon a force of some 300, 
routed them ; the main rebel force, taking the alarm, quietly moved off 
during an interval of three hours, in which General McOlellan stood 
waiting for official information from Rosecranz, so that McOlellan was 
prevented by want of information from being actually engaged in this 
battle. The battle, or, rather, pursuit of Laurel Mountain and Oheat 
River, at which General Garnet was killed, was conducted by General 
Morris in person, assisted by Oaptain Benham (now General) and 
Colonel Dumont, without, it appears, the knowledge or orders of 
McOlellan. At these engagements several thousand prisoners were taken 
by McOlellan's subordinates, Avho, if detained by him, would have saved 
our Bull Run prisoners from the horrors of a long captivity. The 
prisoners which Morris, Benham, Lander, Rosecranz, Dumont, and Kelly 
(several of whom were McOlellan's seniors in ago and military experience) 
had captured, were all, in accordance with the policy announced in 



13 

McClellan's proclamation, of showing "mercy to the rebels when in our 
power, for many of them are misguided," released by General McOlellan, 
without interference from the President, upon taking the "oath of 
allegiance," and returned to the rebel ranks in time to aid in our 
defeat at Bull Run. The estimation in which this policy, which soon be- 
came the humiliation of the Administration and the nation, was held by 
McClellan's officers and troops, is happily shown by the sarcasm of a 
captain in one of his Ohio regiments. The troops, in pursuing the rebels 
through the mountains, caught a rattlesnake, and, bringing it into camp, 
asked the captain what they should do with it. "Oh, swear it," he 
replied, " and let it go." 

The natural accompaniment of ignorance upon any particular subject 
is implicit faith in those who pretend to understand it. At the breaking 
out of the rebellion, both the people and the President, who had been 
chosen from among them, professed and felt utter ignorance of the 
theory and practice of war. When delegations called upon the Presi- 
dent to express their views relative to the novel questions that rapidly 
arose as the nation drifted into the vortex of war, his invariable answer 
was, " Gentlemen, I know nothing about military matters, I leave all 
these subjects to General Scott." We were astonished at the audacity of 
the youthful Southern pupils, who ventured a campaign against their old 
instructor, the hero of a hundred fights. Disappointment alone teaches 
us to "put not our trust in princes," and this disappointment came when 
the great soldier who had triumphed from Vera Cruz to Chepultepec 
was defeated at Bull Eun. Though McDowell and his troops had 
fought far better than any general or troops in Western "Virginia, the 
masses of the people, who judge according to success alone, and seldom 
regard the means used, looked away from the unsuccessful veteran Scott 
to the tyro in command of the Department in which the slender but 
only successes of the war had occurred. It was suddenly discovered that, 
as a junior member of a military commission of three United States 
officers sent by the Government to the Crimea, he had written a book 
which showed great military genius. It has never been our pleasure to 
meet with any person who has read this book, but all whom we have met 
are convinced that it proves its author to be capable of commanding the 
entire Union army. True, the works of Major Delafield and Major 
Mordecai, his co-commissioners, though receeived with equal favor, and 
regarded as possessing equal ability at the time of their publication, were 
not supposed to entitle either of those very estimable but unknown gentle- 
men to the same exalted rank. They doubtless would, however, had 
either of those gentlemen received from so profound a seer of undeveloped 
military genius, as our State Governors usually are, the appointment of 
Major-General of Volunteers. This appointment Captain McOlellan had 



14 

obtained fi-om Governor Dennison, of Ohio, and Majors Delafield and 
Mordecai had not — an appointment, however, vrhich made him the only 
Major-Genera] (though of three months' volunteers), except Scott, then in 
the service ; Wool being only Major-General in the United States army 
by brevet. So that the gratitude of McOlellan and the country is due in 
a greater degree to Governor Dennison of Ohio, than to all other sources 
combined for his militaiy prominence in this vs^ar ; and though these fects 
ujay seem to make McOlellan's prominence the result of accidental good 
fortune in obtaining office rather than of any brilliant military achievements, 
still, when we consider how often great reputations are the offsprings of 
accident, though more frequently of those occurring in the field than in the 
cabinet, we are not surprised if men occasionally win rank as courtiers, 
which they had not won as soldiers. No one supposes that, had McOlellan 
not resigned from the regular army, he would at this moment, without 
being under fire upon any battle-field, have risen to a higher rank than all 
his then senior officers. It is certainly a singular accidental working of 
our military system, that the very resignation from the army Avhich lessened 
by some years his military experience, was necessary to his military pro- 
motion, and that his companions in arms, and seniors in rank, Sumner, 
Fremont, Heintzelraan, Porter, Eosecranz, Shields, Wool, Harney, Ander- 
son, and many others, should behold their Lieutenant of Sappers and 
Miners returning to them as Commander-in-chief, by the magical effect of 
the cabinet counsels of an Ohio Governor. Both the people and the 
President, who so faithfully represents them, however, felt the need of 
some one in whose every qualification they could repose absolute confi- 
dence, and upon whom, in their avowed want of acquaintance with mili- 
tary affairs, they could lean with religions faith and simple trust, and the 
desire that McOlellan might be such an one was, with many, father to the 
faith that he was the most brilliant military man of the age. In the faith 
of the people and the President, therefore, as well as in his position, 
McOlellan succeeded to Scott. The masses, on his promotion to the general 
command, were as enthusiastic in praise of the late Lieutenant of Engineers, 
whose good fortune it had never been to lead more than a company into 
the field, as they had before been in admiration of the gray-haired con- 
queror in a score of fights ; nay, more, for the high praise never given to 
Scott of wearing as a name of honor, that of the terrible conqueror of 
Europe, was conferi*ed by the people upon McOlellan, who was hailed as 
a second Napoleon, while yet innocent of his maiden skirmish. It was 
not displeasing to the people, therefore, that the President transferred to 
McOlellan the absolute supremacy over military matters, for wliich Scott 
deemed himself to be but imperfectly competent, owing to the many 
years ho had already spent in the service of his country, a disqualifi- 
cation from which McOlellan was peculiarly free. Scott, whose mil- 
itary jealousies are historical, was satisfied, as McOlellan's previous 



15 

humble rank and services had not admitted of rivalry or difference between 
them. This wonld not have been the case had the choice fallen on Wool, 
whom, shortly before Bull Kun, Scott stigmatized as an invalid, though 
his health has never interfered with the performance of any duties assigned 
to him, as did Scott's immediately after that battle ; or on Shields, who, 
though next to Scott and Wool in experience, being a fighting General, 
was voted rash and no strategist, and with both of whom, as well as with 
most of the other prominent officers of the army, Scott had at some time 
quarreled. Fortunate, therefore, was the young general in entering upon 
his office, so obscure as not to have gained the envy of Scott, and so 
untried as not yet to have lost the good-natured confidence of the people, 
and consequently of the President. Fortunate was he also in the scene 
of his operations. 

And here we take up again the comparison between him and Fremont, 
who was appointed at the same time to the command of the Western 
Department, his instructions a carte Manche, to do in all respects (we quote 
from recollection the language of the President) "what he deemed calcu- 
lated to promote" not merely the success of the army placed under his 
command, but "the interests of the people over whom, he toa^ sei." A 
viceroy could not have received a more unlimited authority. MeOlellan 
had the President, heads of Departments and Congress, at his elbow, 
before whom to lay his plans, whose suggestions he might receive and 
answer or adopt at pleasure. Fremont, removed from all these and 
obliged to select even his staff and his officers after the first military 
talent had been absorbed by the army of the Potomac, was compelled to act 
promptly upon facts, which, if attempted to be communicated by telegraph, 
would have been known to the whole country, and if by mail the delay 
would have been fatal. MeOlellan, having Scott on his right hand, and 
the President at his left, the Secretary of War in front and of the Treasury 
behind, was responsible only for success. His defeats could easily be 
laid upon others. Fremont stood alone, responsible for success or defeat 
alike, except in the few instances in which his plans were frustrated at 
Washington. McOlellan's enemy was concentrated at a single point — 
Manassas. Fremont's foes were spread over thousands of miles of the 
States of Missouri, Kansas, Illinois and Kentucky, Fremont, on reaching 
St. Louis, found himself in command of about 22,000 troops, the terms of 
service of most of which had already expired, who had received little or 
no pay or attention from the Government, which had been wholly occu- 
pied with the grand army at Washington, and who were necessarily 
scattered, by the exigencies of the service, over Missouri, Kansas, Illinois 
and Kentucky in independent bands, the adequacy of which, as a protec- 
tion from the enemy, may be inferred from the fact that St. Louis, though 
threatened by an army under Price, reported at 30,000 men, had but four 
regiments for its defense, while Cairo, similarly threatened by Johnson, 



16 

Buckner and Pillow, had a like inadequate force. Washington, though 
defended by a force exceeding that of the enemy, was surrounded by a hun- 
dred forts. Fremont caused three to be built for the defense of St. Louis. 
The amount of property at stake at St. Louis was many times that at 
"Washington. Tet Fremont has been accused of unmilitary conduct in 
fortifying St. Louis. Fremont, knowing that every available regiment 
was required for fighting or drilling, had the digging done by contract, 
at a cost of $130,000, an entire cost which would not pay the expense of 
defending 'Washington from breakfast until dinner. Yet he has been 
accused of lavish expenditure in this item. The data are not in possession 
of the public for a calculation of the comparative expensiveness ol the 
Western and Eastern Departments at this period. We only know that, 
though Fremont was furnished with very little money, and at times with 
none, yet the total of claims against the Government, on account of and 
at the close of his three months' control of the Western Department, fell 
short of $10,000,000, a sum which would have paid the general war 
expenses of the Government, nearly all of which were incurred in McOlel- 
lan's department, for about four days. From West and East alike the flower 
of the national forces had hurried to Washington for the defense of the 
capital, and in expectation that the rebellion would receive its first and most 
vital assaults in Virginia, after driving the rebels from which McClellan 
vrould proceed to crush the rebellion in the South and South-west. Little 
did the nation then dream that the few straggling regiments left to protect 
the West from invasion, and put down the Missouri guerrillas, should 
form the basis of the army, which, without the aid of a single Eastern 
regiment, should invade the Southern States, open the Mississippi, with 
the aid of Farragut's fleet, and strike the most ponderous blows at 
the rebellion. McClellan was in command of the grand army of the 
Union, in whose success we were interested and determined to believe. 
Fremont was in command of a distant and neglected department, where, 
though the difficulties of the commander's position were increased, it was 
thought he might be criticised or sacrificed without impairing the general 
faith in the Union arms, whose triumph was expected to be secured, not 
by the feeble army of the West, but by the grand army of the Potomac. 

Fremont immediately set about organizing a gunboat fleet, and was 
charged with visionary views of naval expeditions on the Mississippi and 
its tributaries. McClellan and the Navy Department at Washington were 
opposed to such chimeras. In vain the brave Ellet, who has since found 
a victorious grave, at his capture of Memphis, hurled his eloquent philip- 
pics at McClellan and the Navy Department for their opposition to ram 
fleets. Not until the "irregular opposition" of the Mcrrimac to our 
wooden fleet at Fortress Monroe sent in a moment hundreds of our brave 
sailors to a needless grave, did the lethargy of McClellan and Welles 
give place to the strategy of Stanton, Foote, Davis and Ellett. McClellan 



17 

boldly telegraphed to the commaudant of a New London fort to get his 
ancient smooth-bore guns in order, to stop, with a distant volley of round 
shot, the passage into ISTew York of a vessel from whose sides the heaviest 
solid shot from the Monitor, fired at a distance of fifty feet, fell harmless, 
while Ellet, still unable to obtain a commission in the navy as captain, 
finally received from the innovating Stanton, spite of the adverse influence 
of the General whom he had criticised, a commission as colonel of the ram 
fleet which captured Memphis and opened the Mississippi. McOlellan, after 
one of the most disastrous military movements in history, is preserved from 
utter annihilation by the very iron-clads which he opposed and despised, 
while the gunboat system, initiated under Fremont, has taught the world a 
new lesson in inland warfare, and has given to us all the success which has 
yet crowned our arms in this contest. 

The Government was unable to provide Fremont with money or 
men. The enemy were near. Their spies were all around him. In 
the midst of actual weakness and povertj^, there was but one safe 
course for him to pursue, viz. : to make the utmost display of wealth 
and strength consistent with real economy. The few regiments around 
St. Louis were magnified by every artifice to many times their real 
number. A relative of Fremont being the proprietor of one of the 
most elegant houses in St. Louis, the General gave the Government the 
benefit of its respectability without making it responsible for the rent, 
a pitiful item of twelve hundred dollars per annum, but which has been 
harped upon as a leading item in Fremont's extravagance. Fremont's 
carriage, which was in constant use as a hospital carriage for his sick 
soldiers, was drawn also by four horses, for the very democratic reason 
that two could not draw it through the boot-jack mud of Missouri. Alas, 
that the very mud, which was McClellan's standing excuse for uot moving 
at all, could not justify Fremont in employing an extra team. This 
was characterized as too aristocratic for a republican general, though 
McOlellan, with foreign princes upon his staff, and it was said fifty horses 
in his stall, might employ a special train and a specially decorated car 
with which to receive Mrs. McClellan, and convey her from Baltimore to 
"Washington, as an emperor would receive and convey his consort. Yet 
none saw aught in it but the dignity due to his office. 

Fremont had long been habituated to prominence and command. His 
face was as familiar in the squalid Indian's filthy hut as in the salons of 
the European noblesse; and, for the accomplishment of his assigned task, 
he could, with equal indifference, take part at a diplomatic dinner or dine 
upon roots and the flesh of unclean beasts, surrounded by hardy frontiers- 
men, whom sheer hunger had driven to insanity, and who, in the extrem- 
ity of their sufferings, plunged into the freezing mountain torrent in the 
crazed hallucination that they were bathing in the tropical seas. That 
such a man, intensely matter-of-fact and practical as he was, should be 
2 



18 

« 
charged with clesceiiding to the assumption of barbaric disphiy of equipages, 

&c., which only an ignorant oriental nabob might covet, furnishes another 
illustration of the tact that the defamer, in his stupidity, always invents 
those fictions which it would seem least possible that the world could 
believe, but which partisan enemies adopt with the fiery faith of Tertnl- 
lian — Credo quia imjwssiMle^a.nd believe them because they are mar- 
velous. 

A few days after Fremont took command of the Western Department, 
and before it was possible for him to change the condition of Lyon's com- 
mand, the latter fought the battle of Springfield, under circumstances for 
which the prior commander of the department might perhaps have been 
responsible, but for which Fremont could not have been. That prior com- 
mander was George B. McOlellan. We prefer, however, to accept the judg- 
ment of the very best witness in the case, the heroic Lyon himself, who, in 
his letter written on the eve of the battle, very boldly and bluntly charged 
the responsibility of being " determined to cripple him, if he could," upon 
one whom he chose irreverently to designate as " old Scott." 

There was one occasion upon which the nation may wish, for Fi-emont's 
sake, he had acted differently. McOlellan sat in his office at Washington in 
command of 70,000 men, a surfeit of troops such as no general on this 
continent had ever led into an engagement. There was no attack to be 
made or met, but with the absoluteness of a newly-entlironed boy, he 
telegraphs to Fremont to send him five of his best regiments immediately. 
The dispatch finds Fremont about to send those very troops to the relief 
of the imperiled Mulligan. True, Sturgis and others have been ordered 
to his relief, but he would make assurance doubly sure. Fremont protests. 
The Administration reiterates the order, more and more peremptorily. 
Fkemojtt ought to hate disobeyed the ordek ; but he obeyed, sending 
the troops eastward, leaving but three thousand to defend St. Louis, and 
Mulligan was sacrificed. Yet this is the man who is cliarged with being 
naturally insubordinate. It may be in the power of McOlellan to explain 
as satisfactorily the blunder of Ball's Bluff, the slaughter of Leesburg, 
and the sacrifice of the noble Baker. If such an explanation exists, it has 
not yet gone into history. One point is proven. The strategy which 
compelled the surrender of Mulligan originated at Washington, and not at 
St. Louis. 

It would be in vain for us to attempt to do justice to Fremont's hun- 
dred days in Missouri. He found the State secession. lie left it Union. 
He found the rebel forces threatening St. Louis. He was removed from 
the command at the moment when, after a series of rapid marclios and 
brilliant military combinations unequaled in this war, he had driven the 
rebel armies to the borders of Arkansas, and was tliere upon the eve of a 
battle which would doubtless (for Fremont has never yet been defeated, 



19 

except by politicians) have thorouglily broken up the rebel campaign west 
of the Mississippi. Under Fremont, the rebels were driven one hundred 
miles further than his subordinate, Hunter, thought it safe even to follow 
them. This was a singular reason for superseding Fremont by Hunter. 
Under Hunter the Union troops retreated, but under Halleck they again 
advanced over the same routes and in the same manner as under Fremont ; 
and many months after, and under less favorable circumstances, but still 
triumphantly, Fremont's chosen general, Sigel, fought out Fremont's 
intended battle at Pea Ridge, thus vindicating his policy and his strategy. 
But while Fremont, as a soldier, was putting forth his unrivalled energy 
in Missouri, various influences were conspiring against him at "Washington. 
Though of the regular United States army, and having filled more and 
higher grades therein than his rival on the Potomac, he had dared not 
only to be a soldier, but a thorough soldier, without asking leave of the 
"West Point Academy for boys. His profession had been identical, and his 
experience similar, though superior, as an introduction to military life, to 
that of Washington, but there is hardly any probability that Washington 
would be considered adequate to any responsible command at the present 
day, without first mingling with the boys at West Point. Would it do for a 
soldier educated at West Point to approve of the plan or policy of a 
soldier educated at all points? Would it not at least show that tlie advan- 
tages he had enjoyed conferred no superiority? But Fremont's chief 
offense consisted in having spoken, "Feeedom to the Slave!" 

This would have been well enough, if he had waited, according to the 
first rule of modern statesmanship, which consists in following, not in 
guiding the people, until the masses demanded it of him. Six months 
later. Congress and the President, in the Confiscation Bill, adopted his 
policy ; and the world of to-day is enthusiastic in praise of that statesman- 
ship which shuts its eyes to everything not yet pointed out by the 
slow-moving finger of the twenty millions. It will thus be seen that 
true wisdom is not in the astronomer applying his telescope to the 
heavens, and peering into worlds unseen by those below, but in 
the weather-cock on the top of his observatory, to which the crowd 
look to discover which way the wind blows. Again, although Fre- 
mont's vigorous anti-rebel policy was regarded by the loyal Forth 
with universal approbation, the loyal North were not in rebellion 
against the Government, and were not likely to be, and therefore did not 
need to be conciliated. The border States were, and since the North 
would furnish men and money, no matter what the policy of the Govern- 
ment, and the border states would only furnish their pittance of either 
if the policy of the Government were pro-slavery, what more statesman- 
like than to let the border States rule the loyal North on this question. 
Fremont was removed from command in Missouri, at a time when 



20 

McOlellan's influence was supreme in military affairs, in relation to which 
the President frequently and puhlicly expressed his entire ignorance. We 
make a deduction ; McClellan is mainly responsible for the removal of 
Fremont from command of the Western Department. The petition from 
semi-rebellious Kentucky would have been powerless without the concur- 
rent influence of the General-in-Chief. 

Until the advent of E. M. Stanton, McOlellan had the actual control, or, 
rather, prevention of all war movements, and not a single military success 
of value had been won by the Federal arms. With 200,000 men, he had 
for months permitted the rebels, with a force which no evidence shows 
ever to have been larger than from 70,000 to 100,000, to blockade the 
Potomac and besiege the capital. Under pretense that he was about to 
make a movement, he prevented his troops from erecting winter quarters, 
but compelled them to hibernate in canvas tents, while the rebels lived in 
comfortable log-houses. His influence, like a palsy, restrained movements 
everywhere. Halleck, Buell, and Mitchell, with 200,000 men, were pre- 
vented from attacking Bowling Green, which the subsequent official 
report of Beauregard, and the private letter of A. S. Johnston to Jefferson 
Davis, written on the eve of the battle of Shiloh, show to have been 
defended by only from 7,000 to 15,000 rebels, and Columbus, which was 
doubtless defended by the same force which Pope met at New Madrid and 
Island ISTo. 10. McClellan did not prevent the Merrimac fi'om being com- 
pleted, but he most gallantly prevented a Northern lady from singing 
popular Northern songs to the soldiers. For this distinguished and 
meritorious success, some conservative individuals, we believe, presented 
him with a sword. 

With the advent of Stanton, however, came vigor. Success de- 
pends not so much upon knowledge as upon those qualities which com- 
mand knowledge, and without which all knowledge is unavailing, viz.: 
character, energy, and will. These Stanton infused into the whole army, 
by a general order to ''go forward" on or before the 22d of February, 
which was secretly communicated to all the commanders. Then in 
brilliant succession followed, like meteors gleaming out upon the darkness, 
victory upon victory, in the departments which McOlellan did not control. 
Rapidly as the running lightning could communicate the cheering intelli- 
gence to the country, came Mill Spring, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, 
Bowling Green, Columbus, New Madrid, Island No. 10, Nasliville, 
^Nlurfreesboro', Huntsville, Newborn, Fort Macon, Fort Pulaski, Forts 
Jackson and St. Philip, New Orleans, Pea Ridge, and Pittsburgh Landing. 
Lo ! the centre of the rebellion was broken ; the war almost decided iu 
our favor by the generals in other departments. McClellan, meanwhile, 
was proving himself a second Napoleon only in the number of men under 
his command, which now stood at the enormous figure of 230,000. His 



21 

force exceeded all the forces combined which had won the thirty Union 
victories in other departments, had been longer in the service, were more 
thoroughly equipped, yet, with the exception of the slaughter of Ball's 
Bluff and the unintentional but successful skirmish at Drainsville, no 
strategic movements had been made except upon the Treasury. Not even 
were armed reconnoissances sufficiently made to ascertain the enemy's 
true force, or whether his guns were of brass or wood. Naturally, where 
all was ignorance, all was exaggeration. We state, without fear of contra- 
diction, that never before in history had a force one-fifth as large been 
under the command of a general who never had led a regiment into battle. 
Though the enemy opposed to him numbered but a sixth of his own huge 
and unwieldy command ; though an armed reconnoissance would have 
shown at any time that the enemy's apparently most powerful batteries 
were of wooden guns; though the ablest rebel generals — A. S. Johnston 
and Beauregard — had left the indolence of opposing McClellan at Manassas 
to such calibre as ex-Street Commissioner G. W. Smith, while they found 
more fitting scope for their abilities m endeavoring to stay the headlong 
progress of Grant, McOlernand, Wallace, Sigel, Pope, and Mitchell at the 
West; though, finally, the President's order for an advance was peremp- 
tory, the day passed, and the order stood disobeyed. McClellan was not 
ready, and opposed any advance prior to the 15th of April, by which 
time the heats of summer would have set in, and a further postponement 
till fall would have been inevitable, accompanied by a still further decline 
in Government credit, and a recognition of the independence of the 
Southern Confederacy in Europe. Upon the question of this disastrous 
policy, a council of his twelve division generals was called. Eight of the 
twelve (seven of whom had been appointed at McClellan's request) voted 
for McClellan's inaction. Four, the most experienced officers in the 
service, all of whom were McClellan's seniors in age, service, and 
experience, voted for an advance. The President, then, overruling 
McClellan's counsel, ordered the army divided into iowv corps d^ armee, each 
under command of one of the four belligerent generals, the whole to remain 
under the command of the pacific McClellan, to whom i-emained the alter- 
native of advancing against his judgment or resigning. McClellan advanced 
under protest, on the 10th of March, upon the smoking ruins of the winter 
quarters, in which a rebel force, one-fifth to one-seventh his own in num- 
ber, had quietly spent the winter upon a plain destitute of natural 
strength, entrenchments, or artillery. Never did the American arms, 
except in the surrender of Hull to the British, or of Twiggs to the rebels, 
suflier so great a humiliation, as when the advance on Manassas showed 
what 60,000 rebels had during a long winter achieved against 230,000 
Federal troops. It is difficult in the light of the facts which the advance 
revealed to conjecture upon what possible views McClellan could have 



22 

feared a defeat. Interested or biased contemporaries may urge want of 
time for preparation, but the plea contains its own refutation, for time 
passed at the same rate over McOlellan as over the rebel generals, his 
assistance and resources at all times exceeded theirs, and there was no 
reason Avhy he should not have been more ready than they. Impartial 
history will regard the second advance upon Manassas, inglorious only 
in its long delay, as only less humiliating to the Federal arms than the 
first. 

The President felt the humiliation of this left-handed success, and, in 
honest vindication of his own course, published his order for a general 
advance, made two months earlier, and also two further orders, one limit- 
ing McClellan openly, as he had before been practically, to the army of the 
Potomac, and one restoring Fremont to command, placing Halleck, 
Fremont, and McOlellan, upon a level as commanders of the three 
departments. 

The order and sequence of these events are significant, as showing, 
firstly, that the utmost efforts of the pro-slavery, West Point, and red- 
tape enemies of Fremont had been unable to make good their hue-and- 
cry, by any proofs tending to tarnish his fair fame for incorruptibility, 
energy, and military capacity; and, secondly, that the moment McClellan 
ceased to advise and commenced to act, the cloud passed away from before 
the star of Fremont. 

McOlellan, though still untested as to his capacity to command upon 
the field, was proven to be no longer the fit person to control the military 
counsels of the Government. Again the Government ordered McClellan 
forward, this time to Richmond. Then was one of McClellan's golden 
opportunities. By the evacuation of Manassas, he became acquainted with 
the exact force of the rebels. They, accustomed to and expecting a con- 
tinuation of McOlellan's masterly inactivity, would have been taken as 
much by surprise by a sudden display of energy in him, as by a strategical 
movement by another. Had he then, in compliance witli the policy of Stan- 
ton, marched upon Richmond, by the direction of the healthy valley of 
the Shenandoah, keeping his whole army united, and covering always his 
base of operations, is it within the range of possibility, that that army of 
230,000 marcliiug to Richmond in a week could liave been beaten by the 
60,000 rebel troops, who withdrew from Manassas? The terms of service 
of the rebel troops were rapidly expiring, tliey were discouraged by their 
constant AVestern defeats, and their conscriptions liad not yet filled up 
their ranks. Even under these circumstances, McClellan reluctantly and 
against liis own judgment, but according to his own plan, advanced. We do 
not believe that history justifies auy government in entrusting to a comman- 
der the execution of projects which he disapproves. If liis army prel^•ails, 
his judgment is overthrown. If his judgment is vindicated, his army is over- 



23 

thrown. The issue will leave him in the inevitable dilemma of being either 
unsuccessful or injudicious. "We said, according to McClellau's plan ; hap- 
pily for the country, this is with one qualification. It is believed he intended 
McDowell's division to follow him to the York Eiver, instead of remain- 
ing to protect Washington, and advance by way of Fredericksburg. The 
raid of Stonewall Jackson shows, that had McDowell's force gone with 
McClellan, the rebels would have captured Washington. 

158,000 men in all Avere sent to McClellan for the capture of Richmond, 
of whom over 120,000 accompanied him, and the remainder followed as 
re-enforcements. When he landed at Fortress Monroe, the enemy at York- 
town numbered 7,000 men, with a reserve of 50,000, at most, at Eichmond. 
Had he marched to fight the enemy, ISTapoleon-like, as soon as he could 
have got at them, and stormed every intrenchment as soon as he came to 
it, success, considering the dispai'ity of numbers, would have been inevita- 
ble, the loss of life, treasure, and time would have been infinitely reduced ; 
the rebel re-enforcements, if such there were, for Richmond could not 
have arrived, and Richmond would speedily have been taken, Avhich, 
with the Western campaign, would have crushed the Rebellion, and re- 
stored peace to our unhappy country. 

Time and space do not permit us to trace the various phases of the 
campaign on the Peninsula — the cabinet council in which the plan was 
unanimously condemned, but spite of which the will of the self- 
confident young general prevailed — the transportation of his original force 
of 123,000 men to Fortress Monroe, at an expense of $50,000,000, and at 
the risk of destruction by the then all-powerful Merrimac, to the unfore- 
seen poltroonery of whose new ofiicers he was indebted for the safety of 
the grand army — the oppressive and ostentatious secrecy by which his 
movements Avere veiled from the Forth, while the entire South, by his 
weeks of delay at Fortress Monroe before advancing on Yorktown, was 
made fully aware of his plans and numbers ere he had prepared for action 
— his refusal to capture Yorktown while it yet contained but 7,000 troops, 
though such policy was urged by ofiicers who had grown gray in the 
service before he had entered it — the month of siege with no attempt to 
prevent the re-enforcement of the enemy, or to intercept his retreat, termi- 
nating in an evacuation, against Avliich, as a failure, the country had been 
guaranteed, but which, having occurred, was trumpeted as a victory — the 
battle of West Point, at which, as at the battles of Western Virginia, 
McClellan Avas not present, and of Williamsburgh, fought also while 
McClellan was still at Yorktown, the popular prints of which, however, 
represent the second Napoleon mounted on a fiery black charger at the 
head of his troops, within a few yards of the bayonets of the enemy — 
McClellan's remarkable dispatclies, in which he for some mysterious reason 
gives the credit of this battle to Hancock, though, spite of the suppression 



24 

of the oflBcial reports, the whole country knows that it was fought by- 
Hooker — his astoundingly pusillanimous official dispatch, " My entire 
force is considerably inferior to that of the rebels, who will fight well, 
but I will do all I can with the force at my disposal," when all that he 
could have known was, that the portion of his forces actually engaged, 
which was not a fifth of his entire force, was outnumbered, and when the 
whole country knew that his force was twice that of the enemy. In rela- 
tion to this battle, Hooker says : " History will not be believed when 
it tells that the devoted officers and men of my division were permitted to 
carry on their unequal struggle, from morning until night, unaided, in the 
presence of more than 30,000 of their comrades, with arms in their hands ; 
nevertheless it is true." And the country asks why was it true, not only 
here, but all through the Peninsular battles, that some single division 
fought against overwhelming numbers, while the capacity of the com- 
mander failed to bring the great body of the array into action, thus show- 
ing that the army, whatever was its ratio to the enemy, was too large 
for its general ? IsTor can we dwell upon the leisurely retreat of the rebels 
to Richmond, their leaders being at once too humane and too shrewd to 
develop their strategy in the swamps of the Ohickahominy. Still less 
heart have we for contemplating the ghastly spectacle of 35,000 men 
prostrated by the feyers of the swamps and trenches, without being 
permitted to strike a blow for their country, and led, not against rebels 
in arms, but against malaria, against tj^phoid, against the invisible darts of 
Death himself. We grow sick at heart Avhen we think that while tlie dying 
saviors of our country were daily lifted by hundreds delirious from the 
trenches, their pitying comrades Avere compelled to guard the deserted 
and empty dwellings of rebels from being used as hospitals for the reno- 
vation and cure of their raving brothers in arms, to stand sentinel over 
the springs of rebel water, and the shade of rebel trees, lest a Union soldier 
might receive Avith weeping gratitude their cool refreshment ; thus com- 
pelling the sick and dying youth, to Avhom at tlieir homes fond mothers 
and sisters would have brought the cool Avaters of the mountain springs 
of Maine or of Minnesota, to drink in death from the black and muddy 
waves of the sluggish Pamunkey. And yet, while amidst the malarious 
seclusion of the peninsular jungles all this vast untold tragedy of ten 
thousand scenes was being enacted, every one of which Avould have 
melted in one common river of tears the homes and hamlets of tlie North, 
and none of Avhich Avere the eftects of battle, or legitimate consequences 
of Avar, the free and easy, hail-felloAV-Avell-met, and therefore popular 
young general, Avho had never fought a battle nor Avon a victory, lays 
down Ills cigar, takes up his pen and Avrites, for the country to 
read, that "all things are progressing satisfiictorily, in accordance 
Avith his plans and Avishes;" and the Aveeping and stricken country, Avith 
an eifort to peer dimly through the darkness and see in all this disaster 



25 

that mysterious phantom " strategy," takes back for bnrial the emaciated 
forms of the sons whom, hale and stont, she had laid upon her altar, and 
looks, still through hertears, with a marvelous constancy to the general she 
has idolized for the full fruition of her faith. That army, which McClel- 
lan had telegraphed was greatly outnumbered by that of the enemy, he 
extended before Eichmond in the face of that enemy, until it was twenty 
miles from wing to wing, and exceedingly difficult for one portion of it to 
re-enforce another, when, as if still further to weaken it, he threw a small 
portion of his army across to the right bank of the Chickahominy (a la Ball's 
Bliiif). History will record with tears that Casey's division of raw and 
newly-levied troops, whicli had hardly yet been taught more than how 
to camp and how to march — thus indiscreetly isolated, against the written 
protest of General Keyes, and placed within the enemy's power by the 
commander-in-chief— after a brilliant fight, in which 4,600 men kept 
back 40,000 for twenty -four hours, was at last annihilated, not so much 
by the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, as by the merciless asper- 
sions of the absent commander-in-chief, which were retracted by him too 
late to repair the injury done to an aged and gallant general, a brave 
division and a suffering country. 

The generals engaged deemed it of the utmost importance to press up 
the ultimate rout of the rebel forces at Seven Pines by an immediate 
march on Richmond. McClellan overruled this policy. It subsequently 
appeared that the rebel army fled to Richmond in a panic equaling our 
own at Bull Run, and that, had the policy of his subordinates been pur- 
sued, McClellan's army would have marched into Richmond almost with- 
out resistance. McOlellan was now anchored in the midst of the Chicka- 
hominy swamps, his front seven miles from Richmond ; his rear a con- 
siderable distance forward from White House Landing — his base of ope- 
rations. Here immense quantities of military stores were being collected, 
as rapidly as the means of transportation would permit, and were piled 
up over acres of area without a sentinel, much less a protecting force, 
though fifteen Union soldiers stood guard over the residence and grounds 
of McClellan's former friend, General Lee, in the vicinity. Lest the 
i-ebels might in some way fail to get information of tliis state of facts, the 
gallant young general causes Mrs. Lee — who was fully acquainted with 
them — to be passed from the vicinity of the White House through our 
lines to Richmond, Avith a pomp and ceremony such as might have 
honored the queen of an allied country, rather than the distrust which- 
might have protected our country against the lynx eyes of a female rebel 
and spy. On the day following. General Lee sent a cavalry force under 
Stewart, which passed around McClellan's right flank and across his rear, 
going over the very road over which Mrs. Lee had been taken, slaugh- 
tered our unarmed sick soldiers upon the train at Tunstall's Station, 
sabreing such wounded soldiers as they came across, destroyed the track 



26 

and bridges of the railroad which formed McOlellan'a means of comranni- 
cation with liis base of operations, collected the information which led to 
the great seven days' conflict, and returned unharmed around McClellan's 
left wing to Richmond, thus making the entire circuit of our forces, and 
accomplishing a reconnoissance, one of the most singular in liistory, as the 
opportunity presented to it by McOlellan was one of the most rare and 
remarkable. What an exceedingly ungentle return was this on the part of 
Mrs. Lee for the gallantry with which our confiding general had not only 
enabled her to become possessed of the information which caused this raid, 
but to communicate it to the enemy. Had our General himself, in confidential 
correspondence with General Lee, disclosed important weaknesses in his 
own position, it would hardly have been more ungenerous for the rebels 
to have made use of the disclosure. Such treachery was certainly not to 
have been expected from high-toned and chivalrous rebels. 

It would seem probable that tiiis raid might have suggested to ilcOlellan 
that his base of operations, "White House Landing, was too distant, and that 
a nearer, safer, and healthier one could be found on the James River. The 
enemy were not yet prepared to attack him while making the change, as 
a large corps of their force was with Jackson in the Valley of the She- 
nandoah. That no such idea of changing his base of operations was sug- 
gested, however, is shown by the fact that, instead of sending a recon- 
noissance to the James River, he sent his engineers to relay the track of 
the Richmond and York River Railroad, and rebuild its bridges, and 
ordered up from Fortress Monroe still further stores, siege guns, shot and 
shell, which could not reach him until the railroad should be repaired. 
Tlien came mysterious movements of the rebels in large force. Did 
McClellan consolidate his army, as if expecting to make or meet an 
attack? No ! still the immense area from wing to wing widens, though, as 
he now tells us, his army had been diminished, by death, sickness jnd fur- 
loughs, to one-half its complement at Yorktown. At last— though Napo- 
leon never allowed himself to be attacked, and tiiough it is a familiar 
experience of the soldier that raw troops making an attack are equal to 
veterans receiving it — the blow was struck, not by McClellan, who never 
attacks, but by the rebels. Upon the disastrous seven days, whicli ended 
by stranding the grand army of the Potomac on the James River, there 
to be saved from annihilation by our gunboats, we have no oflieial reports, 
but a few general facts are plain, from the undisputed testimony of the 
entire correspondence of those officers and men wlio bravely stood, un^ 
ciieered by the personal presence of their Commander-in-Chief, where 
whizzing shot and screaming shell baptized them in the fires of battle : 

First. Tiie strategic story that McOlellan contemplated a change in 
his base of operations is proven to be simply false, inasmuch as he had 
neither shown 1)y his acts, nor conmumicatcd to his olHcers any such in- 



27 

tended change until Jackson, pressing close upon McClellan's right wing, 
when the same was withdrawn by the latter, had placed himself 
between McClellan and his former base of operations, so that no other 
line of retreat was open, except to the James River. It certainly is not 
a strategic change of base, but a keteeat, for a general to remove his array 
as far away from the enemy as possible, by the only route Avhich they 
have left possible. 

Seaondly. That during the first, second and third days' battles, which 
ended in this retreat, the entire conflict was sustained by one or two divi- 
sions, after the model of Bull Run, Ball's Bluif and Williamsburgh, while 
the rest were idle, and that McOlellan, therefore, either thought it unne- 
cessary to bring his whole army into action, or else lacked the generalship 
to do it. By this we do not mean to imply that, after the retreat had 
fairly begun, the whole of our army might not have been attacked and 
engaged, but this was the strategy of the rebels, not of McOlellan. 

Thirdly. That, while in each of the fights but a small portion of our 
force was engaged, so far as v.^e know, in each of them the entire available 
force of the rebels was in action. 

Fourthly. That, since the commander could only judge of the numbers 
of the enemy by the vigor of their fighting, McOlellan had no means of 
knowing that, had he on the first two days of the battle brought his entire 
force into action, he would not have outnumbered the rebels ; in short, the 
country has no evidence that McOlellan was outnumbered, but only that 
he was outgeneraled, and that the stories that he was outnumbered rest 
on the same foundation as the similar fictions relative to our forces at Bull 
Run and Ball's Blufl", which we now know to have been untrue. 

Fifthly. That, notwithstanding the particular forces engaged on our 
part were outnumbered, they Vv'ere in no single instance beaten or driven, 
and that every time they retreated it was in consequence, not of the 
strength of the enemy, but of the orders of McOlellan, and that in each 
case, when ordered to retreat, the division generals, who really conducted 
all the fighting, expressed themselves able and anxious to hold their 
ground, thus presenting the military anomaly of a series of battles, in each 
of which we were successful, but iu the aggregate of which we were 
defeated. 

We state the above conclusions as being facts established in the minds 
of the entire Forth. We state as further conclusions, which we be- 
lieve will yet be demonstrated equally to the satisfaction of the world, 
that every retreat that McOlellan ordered was unmilitary and unjustifiable ; 
that every time he said retreat he ought to have said advance ; that after 
the divisions composing his right wing had, under the able, heroic and ex- 
perienced Fitz John Porter, not only held their ground unflinchingly in the 
absence of the re-enforcements which he had demanded, which were at 
hand, but which McOlellan failed to send him, but had actually thrice re- 



28 

pulsed the enemy, and finally driven him one mile within the line of his 
camps, the order of McOlellan coming then to these victorious divisions, re- 
quiring them to do wliatthe enemy had in vain for twelve hours striven to 
compel them to do, viz., to fall back to the rear of his left, and thus initiate a 
general retreat, was in itself equivalent to a rebel victory ; that no division 
of McOlellan's army had been whipped by fighting at the time he compelled 
them all to retreat, and that the army which retreats under such circum- 
stances is defeated, not by the enemy, but by its general ; that the deser- 
tion of his in trenchraents before Richmond was a defeat; that the abandon- 
ment of the immense military stores at White House, without destroying 
them, constituted a disaster ; the retreat over the bridges of the Chickahom- 
iny river, without destroying them, was a blunder, and the abandonment of 
all his sick and wounded to the enemy constitute, when taken in con- 
nection with the foregoing facts, a deep culmination of disgrace to the 
Union arms, which indeed has mystified and confounded the North, 
shaken for the time our confidence in our Government and in our military 
leaders, but which, for that very reason, should be searchingly investi- 
gated and fully understood, that the remedy may be promptly applied. 
Nothing is so simple as to apply the remedy, where the difiiculty is 
known; nothing so impossible as to do right where the facts are con- 
cealed. i'lcClellan's admirers, to cap the climax of deceptive audacity, 
may state that the advantage gained by the change of position is worth far 
more than it cost; but the country is wholly unable to understand the 
strategy by which an overwhelming invading army is so placed by its 
general that it is richly wortli the loss of half the army to save the other 
half. Nay, if the country have not been altogether deceived, the salva- 
tion of the remaining half of the army is due to-day to the President and 
General Wool. The latter, for months, in vain besought McClellan for a 
few thousand troops with which to capture Norfolk and Portsmouth. The 
President, on his personal visit to Fortress Monroe, by one of those inter- 
ferences with McOlellan's plans, to which the country is indebted for the 
measure of safety which has attended the operations of the Eastern De- 
partment, placed the men at his disposal. Portsmouth and Norfolk were 
taken, tlic ilerrimac destroyed, and the James River thus opened to our 
gunboats. AVool has since been removed from Fortress ^lonroe to Balti- 
more ; but to his policy, in opposition to that of McClellan, the latter 
was indebted for his ability to retreat to the James River, there to be 
protected by our gunboats, instead of being assailed by the Merrimac. 
If such be strategy, what is incompetency? If this be victory, what, in the 
name of the God of Battles, is disaster? And who is General McOlellan, 
that any portion of the people should liave an interest in sending tiieir brave 
sons to disaster and the grave under his leadership, rather than to victory 
under the banners of other generals ? AVho, that the country should, in 
that acme of faith to which religious devotees can hardly rise in their wor- 



29 

ship, still ceaselessly chant, "Though thou slay me, yet will I trust m 
thee." 

There are many other facts which deserve to be carefully and candidly 
collated and fully brought out relative to this disastrous Peninsular cam- 
paign, which daily will loom up more and more disastrously as its facts 
become stripped of the gloss with which it is the interest of some to con- 
ceal them. We leave them without comment. 

"We have no epithets — we have only sorrow for the reverses of those to 
whom the country entrusts the power to serve her cause and promote her 
glory. ITor is it so much the fault as the misfortune of McOlellan that he 
has failed to be what a portion of the people, without any word or act on his 
part to justify the expectation, insisted upon mistaking him for, viz., an 
able man and a great general. We only trust that the people will take 
to themselves their full share of the blame for the giddy elevation to 
which they have raised him, and that their ultimate construction of his 
conduct will be as charitable as that of those who have felt it to be a duty 
which they owed to the country, to speak with bold, sad kindness and 
truthful criticism of his career. We have one remark, however, to make. 
If this rebellion could possibly be put down by conciliatory means, we be- 
lieve General McOlellan qualified to command our armies. We believe that 
those who have adhered to him in a partisan spirit are those who believe 
that the rebellion is to be put down by some other mode than fighting. We 
have conversed with his soldiers, and we know that the basis of much of 
their former confidence in him was the belief that he would achieve 
great results without loss of life. All these theories are radically 
false. Instead of accomplishing great results with little loss of life, he 
has accomplished only defeat, at a tremendous sacrifice of life, and of 
every other element of success. We believe this rebellion will be put 
down by fighting, and kept down by a radical change in the feelings and 
aspirations of the ruling class of the South ; that this change is not 
to be the result of individual conversions of those who constitute the 
ruling class, but is to be a change in the class that rules — by sending the 
class that now rules to the bottom of society, and by bringing the class 
now at the bottom to the top ; by taking the sceptre from the one 
million of slaveholders, and giving it to the seven millions of " poor white 
trash " who now do their bidding — by so changing and remodeling the 
Constitution of Southern society as to make it democratic instead of 
aristocratic — republican instead of monarchical — united instead of disin- 
tegrated, liberal instead of despotic— free instead of slave— rich instead 
of poor — educated instead of ignorant— civilized instead of barbarous — 
happy instead of miserable. 

As the aspirations and feelings of the present ruling class of the South 
are for slavei-y, because it helps them to everything dear and valuable in 



30 

life, as onr aspirations are for freed!)m, because it brings to us ever3'tlung 
dear and valuable in life, so will the affections of tins upturned common 
people of the South, be for the freedom to which, they will have been 
indebted for everything dear to them, and necessarily to that Union which 
binds them to free States, free press, free speech, and free schools. This 
war can have but one or the other of two results — The South must he 
free, or her slaves must he free. Slavery is our mortified limb, and its 
amputation is necessary. Let not the task be entrust ■. to one who 
believes that amputation is murder. His hand will tremble and his 
heart will fail him. Let it rather be entrusted to the representative 
man of those great radically Democratic ideas, of the superiority 
of those institutions in which all men are free, for which 
this war on oui' part is waging, and not to a devotee of the 
repudiated ideas of the sovereignty of the States, and the perpetuity of 
negro bondage, witb all its inevitable tendencies, to establish despotism 
over white as well as black, for which this war, on the part of the South, 
is being waged, but which, by the very act of entering upon this wai", the 
iSTorth has logically cast to the v/inds. Yes, let it be entrusted to that man 
to whom every constituent of the present Administration looks with a pecu- 
liar affection, which it is not given to any man in the nation to rival or 
destroy ; who has in every trial been not merely true to the idea of Free- 
dom, but a pioneer in its path ; before whom (we quote from the language 
of a Southern Unionist) " the rebels have run faster and further, during 
this war, than before any other general;" who, at the battle of Cross 
Keys, at the head of 10,000 men, defeated Stonewall Jackson, the ablest 
general of the rebels, at the head of 28,000, and drove hira out of the 
Shenandoah Valley, and who stands to-day not the first monument in 
history of the temporary ingratitude and incomprehension of Republics, 
but Avith a sweet compensation in the discriminating and criticising, but 
intelligent and affectionate regard of almost the whole people of that 
North which is to be henceforth the country. We do not suppose there 
is a man in the country who believes that Fremont, with 185,000 men, 
could have failed to capture Richmond, defended by 91,000. It is not 
eulogy, but history, to say that while Fremont has always acted with less 
means at his command than any other generals considered it possible for 
him to succeed with, he has always been successful, except in pleasing 
red-tapists and slow-coaches, and has often been brilliant in his military 
achievements, while McOlellan, with greater nieans at his command 
than Alexander, Oa^sar, Napoleon, or Wellington, has yet to win his 
first success; has lost more men and means in his disasters than 
they in their victories, and, to conclude our comparison, has sacri- 
ficed twice as many men as Fremont has ever commanded. Presi- 
dents and administrations may pass away ; but the principle of Free- 
dom, with which the name of Fremont is associated, will endure 



31 

forever. He that has been crucified with it sliall reign witii it. Some 
have embarked into tliis war, and many have remained at home to thwart 
and oppose it, under the fixed determination that, whatever else shall 
come of it, it shall not free the slaves. The tyrannical edicts of such 
pro-slavery men as Halleck and Butler show that the alternative is to 
enslave the masters; and it becomes us to consider whether it is less 
practicable to f';ee four millions of black slaves than to reduce to political 
slavery eight k Uions of white freemen — for we have no evidence that, 
until Southern institutions are homogeneous with our own, the Southern 
people will, unless compelled by military coercion, remain in union 
with us. From this blind, illogical, and therefore temporary influence, 
the American people are soon to emerge, and when they do, and, as a 
corollary, the military events of this war shall be viewed with sonnd 
judgment instead of party prejudice, it will appear that, in deep vision 
and forecast of the future — in energetic and able adaptation of means to 
emergencies — in modesty in the hour of victory over traitors in the field, 
and fortitude under defeats inflicted by "patriots with rebel sympathies" at 
home — in skillful performance of every duty to which he has been called 
— and, above all, in tliat pioneer forecast which makes those who have 
succeeded but followers in his path, and those Avho have failed opposers 
of his plans — one name stands pre-eminent — it is that of John 0. Fremont, 
and we believe that the people of the North will yet rise in their might 
and demand that Fremont, the most experienced and energetic officer in 
the service, and the senior in rank, be placed where he deserves to be, 
and where the interests of his country in this fearful crisis requii-e that 
he should be — at the head of the American armies. Yet, though this, or 
aught like this, fail -though Fremont be still kept back — though he be 
required to do penance for his victories, while others are promoted for 
their disasters — yet, when the smoke and clouds of the combat shall have 
cleared avv^ay, his star shall shine forth as the^morning star of regenerated 
American Freedom, and his fame shall be that of the pioneer in that 
reformed Eepublican policy which shall have given to the world a restored 
American Union. 

"For Humanity sweeps onward— where, to-day, the martyr stands, 
On the morrow crouches Judas, with the silver in his hands ; 
Though to-day the stalce is ready, and the hirid fagot burns, 
All the world, upon the morrow, for its loved apostle mourns ; 
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe returns, 
And gathers up the scattered ashes into History's cold urns." 



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